I don't think sellers are always doing this because of the 3.5% fee. I think they're doing it because paypal offers them no protection at all on international shipments that are untraceable.

For example, I've lost a lot of packages to India and a few to Israel and Turkey, and a couple to South America. There is no postal tracking to those countries. Therefore, the buyer is free to claim they never got it and paypal will immediately refund their money upon complaint.

However many sellers you may think are out there ripping people off, I can promise you there's 10x the number of buyers. In other instances, I can imagine the buyer gets frustrated over not receiving the package. They file a claim or the sender refunds on request. Legit at the time.

Then the package shows up from customs a month or two later. There's no tracking. How many customers are going to be honest enough to tell the seller that so far after the refund. In my experience, exactly none.

I've been called a racist against a number of countries. Sorry, it's not the country I'm prejudice against. I just don't trust their postal systems. It's a really tough spot for sellers.

So before you make a judgement, put yourself in their place.

Yes, those would be special cases and you would be perfectly justified there. But people on this forum have been insisting on buyers using paypal as a gift for shipments within North America. I don't believe that is reasonable.

Seriously, do not use the Paypal gift option. Even if someone has what appears to be good feedback here, you are taking a risk.

The last couple of days we have another example of someone who paid by the Paypal gift option and is now unhappy because he appears to be out several hundred US dollars in what looks pretty convincingly like a scam from someone who had made successful transactions here with other people.

Circumstances change. Someone who has had successful transactions in the past may still do something unexpected.

I think the people here who buy and sell the most, the most reliable people, the ones who you really can count on here to be completely honest, would agree with me on this. Don't use the paypal gift option.

Sellers, if for reasons Cole mentions above you are concerned about shipping to countries where you cannot track the package, do not sell to people in those countries.

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